Attorney likens ex-Peterson lawyer to dictator

Retired judge Daniel Locallo, left, and defense Lawyer for Drew Peterson Steve Greenberg speak with the media as they leave the Will County Courthouse for lunch, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013, in Joliet, Ill., during the second day of a hearing in the former suburban Chicago police officer's request for a new trial. During the hearing Locallo testified as the defense sought to bolster arguments Peterson deserved a retrial on charges he murdered his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Peterson's attorneys contend his former lead trial attorney, Joel Brodsky, botched his case. Locallo told the judge that Brodsky made a major mistake by calling one witness whose testimony badly backfired on the defense. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

JOLIET, Ill. (AP) — A former lead attorney for Drew Peterson managed the one-time police officer’s murder trial like a “dictatorship,” a current Peterson lawyer said Wednesday as he sought to persuade a judge to grant a new trial.

Peterson was convicted in September of murdering his third wife, 40-year-old Kathleen Savio, who was found dead in her dry bathtub in 2004.

Peterson’s current legal team argues that Peterson should get a new trial, in part, because Peterson’s longtime lead attorney, Joel Brodsky, bungled the trial.

A recent public feud between Brodsky and one of his former colleagues, Steve Greenberg — who is still representing Peterson — has spilled into this week’s hearing.

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As attorneys presented final arguments on the motion Wednesday, Judge Edward Burmila asked Greenberg why he and other attorneys didn’t object to allegedly egregious mistakes Brodsky made in court during the trial.

Burmila ended Wednesday’s proceedings without issuing a ruling and planned to resume the hearing on Thursday afternoon.

Sitting in an overflow courtroom listening to Greenberg’s comment, Brodsky groaned and shook his head.

“It’s fiction. It’s an absolute bald-faced lie,” Brodsky told a reporter during a break in the proceedings.

Peterson is also a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, 23-year-old Stacy Peterson, but has not been charged in that case.

Also at Wednesday’s hearing, a retired judge testified that Brodsky’s decision to call a divorce attorney who talked to Stacy Peterson before she vanished may have led to Peterson’s murder conviction.

That divorce lawyer, Harry Smith, told jurors that Stacy Peterson had once asked him if she could she squeeze more money out of her husband in divorce proceedings if she threatened to tell police that he killed Savio three years earlier.

With Smith’s testimony, Daniel Locallo testified Wednesday, jurors for the first time heard someone say Peterson admitted to killing Savio.

“Up until that point, there had not been any direct evidence in respect to Mr. Peterson causing the demise of Ms. Savio,” the retired judge testified.

If Burmila rejects the motion for a new trial, he has said he would proceed quickly to sentencing. The 59-year-old Peterson faces a maximum 60-year prison term.

In calling Smith, Brodsky hoped Smith’s testimony that Stacy Peterson allegedly sought to extort her husband would dent the credibility of statements she made to others that Drew Peterson threatened to kill her. Instead, Smith kept stressing how Stacy Peterson seemed to sincerely believe her husband had killed Savio — and that her husband even told her directly that he killed Savio.

The state’s lead prosecutor in the case, James Glasgow, at the time referred to Smith’s testimony as “a gift from God.” After the trial, some jurors said it persuaded them to convict Peterson.

Peterson’s current attorneys say the decision was all Brodsky’s. He says the entire defense team, including several lawyers still representing Peterson, agreed to it.

Locallo said he went through court records and determined it was Brodsky who made the decision, calling him “the captain of the (defense) ship” at trial.

Under cross-examination, though, Locallo conceded that none of Brodsky’s fellow trial attorneys expressed their objections to the judge.